Angry Danielle
I usually have a rather well-tempered personality. It takes a lot for a non-immediate family member to pique my anger, and when I finally reach my boiling point, I can be quite scathing.
I do my personal banking with Citibank. I have never ran into a problem with them, although I have heard horror stories from friends, who have re-Christened the bank “Sh*ttybank”. I now know why.
Two weekends ago, I was reconciling my finances and noticed a $7.50 service fee deducted from my checkings account. Strange, I thought, since my company has an agreement with Citibank. As I have direct deposit into that account, the service fee is waived.
Come Monday, I called Citibank customer service. It seemed that what I wanted would have been easy enough to clear up – give me back my $7.50 since I have direct deposit. Apparently it wasn’t so straightforward to the representative I got on the phone. She insisted that instead of an EZ Checkings account (which has a $1,500 minimum balance requirement) I had a different checkings account that had a $6,000 minimum balance requirement.
“What?” I asked. “Why was the type of checkings account I have changed without any notification or my authorization?”
Of course they didn’t know. She agreed to change my account back to an EZ Checkings account, and then put in a request to have the $7.50 fee refunded to me. And naïve Danielle believed her.
Naïve Danielle soon turned into Angry Danielle when Wednesday rolled around and the $7.50 service fee had not yet been refunded. Refund?! I love how they use refund, as if they asked me if they could take the money directly from my account in the first place.
I do feel bad for the poor representative I got this time around. He sounded like a very nice guy, but I was just not in the mood to be pleasant. Surprisingly, I had a load of work to do and didn’t have time to spend on the phone, riddling with customer service. So, I told him exactly what I wanted him to do.
“There are two outcomes I want as a result of my call today. (1) I want you to remove this $7.50 deduction from my account and (2) I want you to make sure this never happens again. I am telling you this upfront so that when you ask me at the end of this call ‘Ma’am, have I answered all your questions to your satisfaction?’ you already know my answer.”Through all that, the representative kept interrupting me. That just pissed me off even more. “Don’t interrupt me, just listen and let me finish speaking. I know you are going to sit there and explain to me that my average balance for the month fell below $1,500; however, I have direct deposit to my account and the service fee should be waived. I don’t care why the fee was taken, I just want you to fix it. Don’t give me any more excuses.”
Even after that, the representative still tried to give me more explanations. “Look, sir, are you going to be able to do this for me over the phone, or am I going to have to waste more of my time going down to the branch and having this fixed in person?”
“No, no, ma’am, of course I can fix this for you over the phone,” he replied, and then put me on hold.
I think I scared the poor guy so badly that he went to get someone else to handle my call. I heard someone else’s voice start to pick up my call when they dropped it. Bad move (although I would probably have hung up on myself if I were on the other end of the phone). I called back and the lady who answered got the exact same diatribe as above. Except this time it sounded worse because I started off with, “I just got hung up on, are you going to hang up on me too?”
After all this, the only thing that occurred was that the representative screwed up my accounts, mis-linking them, and I did have to go down to the branch to undo her damage in person. There is still a ticket in to have my money refunded, and if it doesn’t go through soon, then I will be sure to give them another earful.
As a side note: I ported my cell phone number from AT&T to Verizon last Monday, and I am still unable to receive phone calls to my new Verizon phone 11 days later. And last week my cable box broke. If an RCN technician were to come out to look at it and find that the cable box was fine, then we get charged for his services. We decided to screw the cable box and return it. Why does everyone suck?
I do my personal banking with Citibank. I have never ran into a problem with them, although I have heard horror stories from friends, who have re-Christened the bank “Sh*ttybank”. I now know why.
Two weekends ago, I was reconciling my finances and noticed a $7.50 service fee deducted from my checkings account. Strange, I thought, since my company has an agreement with Citibank. As I have direct deposit into that account, the service fee is waived.
Come Monday, I called Citibank customer service. It seemed that what I wanted would have been easy enough to clear up – give me back my $7.50 since I have direct deposit. Apparently it wasn’t so straightforward to the representative I got on the phone. She insisted that instead of an EZ Checkings account (which has a $1,500 minimum balance requirement) I had a different checkings account that had a $6,000 minimum balance requirement.
“What?” I asked. “Why was the type of checkings account I have changed without any notification or my authorization?”
Of course they didn’t know. She agreed to change my account back to an EZ Checkings account, and then put in a request to have the $7.50 fee refunded to me. And naïve Danielle believed her.
Naïve Danielle soon turned into Angry Danielle when Wednesday rolled around and the $7.50 service fee had not yet been refunded. Refund?! I love how they use refund, as if they asked me if they could take the money directly from my account in the first place.
I do feel bad for the poor representative I got this time around. He sounded like a very nice guy, but I was just not in the mood to be pleasant. Surprisingly, I had a load of work to do and didn’t have time to spend on the phone, riddling with customer service. So, I told him exactly what I wanted him to do.
“There are two outcomes I want as a result of my call today. (1) I want you to remove this $7.50 deduction from my account and (2) I want you to make sure this never happens again. I am telling you this upfront so that when you ask me at the end of this call ‘Ma’am, have I answered all your questions to your satisfaction?’ you already know my answer.”Through all that, the representative kept interrupting me. That just pissed me off even more. “Don’t interrupt me, just listen and let me finish speaking. I know you are going to sit there and explain to me that my average balance for the month fell below $1,500; however, I have direct deposit to my account and the service fee should be waived. I don’t care why the fee was taken, I just want you to fix it. Don’t give me any more excuses.”
Even after that, the representative still tried to give me more explanations. “Look, sir, are you going to be able to do this for me over the phone, or am I going to have to waste more of my time going down to the branch and having this fixed in person?”
“No, no, ma’am, of course I can fix this for you over the phone,” he replied, and then put me on hold.
I think I scared the poor guy so badly that he went to get someone else to handle my call. I heard someone else’s voice start to pick up my call when they dropped it. Bad move (although I would probably have hung up on myself if I were on the other end of the phone). I called back and the lady who answered got the exact same diatribe as above. Except this time it sounded worse because I started off with, “I just got hung up on, are you going to hang up on me too?”
After all this, the only thing that occurred was that the representative screwed up my accounts, mis-linking them, and I did have to go down to the branch to undo her damage in person. There is still a ticket in to have my money refunded, and if it doesn’t go through soon, then I will be sure to give them another earful.
As a side note: I ported my cell phone number from AT&T to Verizon last Monday, and I am still unable to receive phone calls to my new Verizon phone 11 days later. And last week my cable box broke. If an RCN technician were to come out to look at it and find that the cable box was fine, then we get charged for his services. We decided to screw the cable box and return it. Why does everyone suck?
posted by danielle at 1:54 PM
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